


Better Than Nothing

by discountsatanism



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Fluff and Angst, Gen, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, finn is a mess but only because there's nothing to fight, i hope this is as #relatable as i think it is, no cliff hangers. none. ever., poe is a mom friend and i will die on this hill, were there something to fight he'd become an ANGRY mess as illustrated in tfa, whoops this was a lot longer than i meant it to be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-19
Updated: 2016-09-16
Packaged: 2018-08-09 19:37:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,736
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7814497
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/discountsatanism/pseuds/discountsatanism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It had all passed in a constant haze of time standing still, like three years of the same moment with brief flashes of time passing when Poe came or when someone acknowledged him, and it was exhausting but he couldn’t stop doing it, and he just wanted it to end somehow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> This is all I can write. All I can write is ~1000 words of Finn suffering that ends in happiness, usually with Poe. He just. . .deserves all the happiness.

Finn didn’t know what to do. Before, he’d been busy trying to escape the First Order, then, he’d been busy trying to help Rey, and then he’d been sick and near-dead and had to drink his food. But now he was(mostly, the med droid said he wouldn’t be going on missions for a while) better, and nobody had figured out anything for him to do(being an ambassador? Janitorial duties?), so he drifted around the Rebel Base in a haze of the shock from loss of. . .everything. The First Order had based his life off routine, the period in between had turned all his goals to _survive_ , and now? Now he had nothing to do. Poe was busy working and so was General Organa(who scared him, anyway- he was still jumpy every time someone exuded even the faintest air of authority), and so all he did was wander around the base, because at least it was _something._

He still felt that underlying desire to be useful, but even when someone noticed him, it was mostly as if he was a thing(something awe-inspiring, to high to bother to _work_ ? An alien, not yet to be trusted?), and nobody ever asked him to help with anything. He would sit and watch them for a while and then the overwhelming _nothingness_ would slam into him again and he’d leave to go wander somewhere else.

It was better when Poe had more time, because then he could come and talk to Finn and tell him about all the great things he’d done and this new thing that he learned, and Finn could listen and talk and feel like he had something to do and he was there, at least. And Poe was nice and soft and friendly and the opposite of the First Order and Finn felt better with him(safer?) and he liked to learn about all the things the First Order had given him through a distorted lense.

But Poe wasn’t always around, he went on missions for weeks at a time and got captured and then he was gone for months sometimes, and there were so many hazy days in between where Finn wandered corridors too many times and fooled everyone into thinking he had somewhere to go(or maybe they just didn’t notice him) and then he would wander until he was exhausted and fell asleep in corner of the ship. And mostly he didn’t dream, but when he did, it was of the First Order and Starkiller and Rey with terror on her face and snow with blood on it. Then Finn woke up covered in sweat, just like the village, and he would lean with his back against the cold wall(it was a different wall every time, but always cold) and he would wait while the thoughts pounded in his head like punches and he either died or came out of it, fell asleep again and woke up to another day of nothingness.

Finn wished Rey was here, sometimes, but she was training to be a Jedi, and nobody knew how long she’d be there, but it had been a long time(three years, someone said), and it had all passed in a constant haze of time standing still, like three years of the same moment with brief flashes of time passing when Poe came or when someone acknowledged him, and it was exhausting but he couldn’t stop doing it, and he just wanted it to end somehow.

Poe was coming back tomorrow, they said, barring any last-minute captures, horrible injuries, or sudden death. Finn felt better(he always felt better when he knew Poe was going to be there soon), and started wandering around the launchpad and the starships.

When Poe finally came(three days late, he’d gotten horribly injured), he found Finn and started talking immediately. Finn nodded and said a few words, and listened to Poe talk about the mission he’d been on(someone had figured out a thing that may or may not have been related somehow to Captain Phasma’s backstory, it turned out to be nothing), and Finn slowly came out of the haze.

“So then I was talking to this guy who I can half-understand but who I’m still half-relying on guessing for and who’s using a ton of idioms I don’t understand and a local dialect I barely get,” Poe was saying, “and he’s telling me about this old village that used to be there but then got destroyed by the First Order, and it seems reasonable that Phasma would be there, you know, but then the village starts sounding real familiar.”

Finn, who’s been nodding this whole time, says “Like the village. The one. . .,” he says, trailing off, because he’s been sort of half-paying attention, but then he’s thinking about the village and memories crash down on him and somewhere in there he fell over and now he’s against a wall(it’s cold, and thousands of nights rush back into him, louder now because he was so close to moving out of the haze and coming back into it feels like choking), and Finn feels like he’s dying only he’s not and that’s nearly as bad somehow.

Poe is saying something, and Finn tries as hard as he can to focus on it. “Finn,” he’s saying, over and over, “Finn, buddy, I’m sorry, should’ve guessed,” and Finn is trying to nod, but it looks like he’s shaking(or maybe he’s just shaking), and soon there’s a blanket around his shoulders and he’s not sure where he is.

Eventually, the memories lose their momentum and when Finn opens his eyes he sees a ceiling instead of fire. Poe is sitting next to him.

“Seem familiar?” Poe says softly, because this was almost exactly what happened when he woke up from the injury, staring at a ceiling until he realized Poe was sitting two feet away. “I was going to take you to the medbay, but then I remembered that whenever I used to have them, I always wanted to wake up somewhere soft and private, and my room was closer.”

“Your room?” Finn asked. “Them?”

“This is my room,” Poe said. “This is a pretty weird way to show you, but I never really got around to it before. And the panic attacks. That’s what you were having, I think.” He’s using that tone where everything he says feels like a soft blanket, and it’s soothing enough that Finn can answer.

“That’s what they are?”

“Yeah, I think,” he said. “Most of us get them eventually. I used to get them all the time, but it’s better now. Sort of. Mostly.”

“I’ve never had one when you were here,” Finn said. “Sorry.”

Finn wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but it wasn’t Poe to laugh. “Don’t be sorry,” Poe said. “The first time I had a panic attack was when I got in an X-wing, flew straight up, and crashed into a building. You’ve got more on your back from two weeks than I have from decades. ‘Sides, I’m used to it by now. This isn’t an easy life. How many?”

“A lot. They wake me up.”

“Those are the worst kinds,” Poe said. “Actually, they’re all bad, but those are the worst.”

Finn sat up. “Thank you.”

“For what?”

He wasn’t sure what to say. He still wasn’t used to talking about things, really. Just what was in his head and what he’s read and the things he used to whisper to the other Stormtroopers in the dark. “For. . .understanding. Bringing me back. Not getting angry.”

“Why would I get angry?” Poe asked. “I. . .oh, no, that makes sense. You’re welcome.” Then he laughed again. “Kriff, this is awkward.”

Finn smiled weakly. “Yeah, a bit. But thanks anyway.”

“Do you want some food?” Poe asked. “You’re probably hungry.”

Finn nodded. “Yeah, that’d be nice.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "This'll be a one-shot," they said. "I don't even really have a plot for it," they said.  
> The Supportive Mom Friend Poe and Really Not Okay Despite Deserving The Universe Finn characterizations are my canon until someone says something better.

Finn noticed them a week after Poe left for his next mission. He was sitting, watching some of the pilots fix and maintain their ships when he noticed a few of them glancing at him once in awhile and whispering to each other. Most people had gotten used to him being there. He wondered if they were actually looking at him(maybe there was something behind him), and eventually decided they probably weren’t.

A month later, he was still reeling from a bad panic attack(he’d woken up in a cold sweat and didn’t come down from it until he heard people moving around outside the door) and found himself stumbling to the pilots again. A few hours later, he noticed they were watching him again. One of them(Poe had called her Jess once, he was pretty sure) walked over to him.

“Hey,” she said.

Finn looked up, startled. “What?”

“You’re Finn, right?”

He nodded. He was a little frightened(people who weren’t Poe or Rey were sometimes scary, but she knew Poe, right?).

“Poe said to give you this,” she said, dropping something into his hands. It looked like a tiny bb-8, he thought. Only not made of metal. “It’s a puzzle. You can take it apart and reassemble it. He said it would help with the memories, to have something to keep you here.”

Finn looked up. “From Poe?”

Jess sighed. “He likes you. He’s never given  _ me _ a tiny, intricately detailed plastic version of his favorite possession and possible friend. I’d take it. He wasn’t kidding about its usefulness.”

“He likes me?”

“You did save his life,” Jess said. “And he’s a nice guy.”

Finn gave a small smile. “Thank you. Both of you.”

“I actually had no part in this, but you’re welcome.”

He spent the next few weeks trying to figure out how to take mini bb-8 apart(difficult), and the next two months trying to put him back together again(near-impossible, there were thousands of parts) and Poe was right, it did help, because now he had something to do again, now he could focus on figuring out how to take apart and reassemble the puzzle, and it didn’t break through the haze completely(there were still days when he looked up from the puzzle because something was wrong and he couldn’t do it any more and just sat there, staring and sinking back into nothing), but it was better, and he was probably going to be able to do it in a day by the time Poe got back.

When Poe got back. Poe, the person who’d somehow managed to be one of two people that could actually make him feel things, because one time he’d seemed like a convenient escape route. Finn had wondered how fragile it all really was sometimes, how close he’d been that day in the village to just going to reconditioning and letting himself be remade. He wondered if that would’ve been better- he was more useful there. He wondered if Starkiller would still have been destroyed, and if he’d have been killed along with it. He wondered if that would’ve been better, too.

The puzzle stopped the violent memories, the ones pounding at his brain likes punches, but it never stopped the silent ones, the what-ifs and I-wonders, that crept into his mind and sat there like corpses, reminding him of what could’ve been but wasn’t. But Finn did it anyway, because it was still better than nothing. At least it kept some of them away.

Poe came back when Finn was working on the lower half of mini bb-8, sitting next to him against the wall. “Hey,” he said. “Do you like it?”

Finn nodded. “It’s got a lot of small parts.”

“How many have you lost?” Poe asked. “I lost twenty on my first go around.”

“Five,” Finn said. He’d been trying to be careful.

Poe sighed. “How long did Jess wait to give it to you?”

“About a month after you left,” Finn said. “Wait?”

“She was supposed to give it to you in the first week,” Poe explained. “Jess just really likes puzzles. Probably solved it herself.”

Finn nodded, slipping another piece of mini bb-8 into place. “Thanks anyway. What was your mission about?”

“Testing the limits of the X-wings. It meant I got to drive as recklessly as possible in very dangerous atmosphere, which was fun,” Poe said. “There’s a planet called Thustra that has rain made of milk.”

“That doesn’t sound dangerous,” Finn said.

“Well, the rain also had corrosive acids in it, so yes it was.”

“And did the X-wing stand up to the challenge?” Finn asked.

Poe laughed. “Kriff, no. The engine dissolved, bb-8 accessed the net for the sole purpose of downloading enough swear words to express its feelings, and I ended up hiding in a cave for three weeks living off of some weird vine that bb-8 told me was safe to eat. It turned rocks blue.”

Finn smiled a little. It was odd, sometimes, how little everything phased Poe. Stormtrooper offers to rescue you even though he has no idea what he’s doing? Alright. Near death? He can do it. Tasked with blowing up one of the biggest starships in existence? Seems doable. Stormtrooper has panic attack right in front of you? He has something for that. Stuck in a cave with milky acid rains outside? Just another day.

“You know,” Poe said. “I’ve never actually seen where you go. Jess told me you sat near the pilots sometimes, but I don’t remember where your quarters are.”

“I don’t have quarters,” Finn said, feeling on the floor for a piece he’d dropped, before he realized what he’d said.

“What?” Poe asked.

Finn sighed. “I. . .don’t have quarters.”

“You were never assigned a place to sleep? Where’ve you been sleeping? Supply closets?”

“Yes.”

Poe made a noise somewhere between a yelp and muffled screaming. He sighed. “You should sleep with me, then. I can bring a mattress in- or kriff, take my bed, I don’t use it most of the time anyway, you sure you don’t have a  _ bed?” _

Finn blinked. “In your room? But that’s your personal-”

“Finn, you’ve already taken a nap in my bed.”

“That was a panic attack. You brought me there,” Finn corrected. “That’s different from me sleeping in your bed all the time.”

“Well, I’m bringing you there again. You shouldn’t have to sleep in a supply closet,” Poe said.

Finn smiled.

It turned out that having a new place filled with things that he could touch was almost as good as mini bb-8, because Poe was more than happy to talk about his mom and his life and every single thing he had in his room, and the next time Poe left for a mission, Finn came back to Poe’s room(Poe was calling it theirs but Finn wasn’t quite ready for that) and it felt almost like he was still here.

Later, Finn realized he’d figured out how to deal with the silent memories. Find other ones.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter is way longer and there's some jess in here? idk i just felt like if poe's the mom friend she's the Cool Bi Aunt who doesn't really understand how to be soft and nice and not tease people

Finn was sitting just outside the base. He was fiddling with the puzzle. It was almost completed. Only bb-8’s base remained. There were a few pilots still working on their fighters, but he didn’t know any of them, and it was mostly quiet except for the click of the pieces as they slid into place and the sounds of the base.

He could feel himself sinking in and out of the haze. It happened sometimes, when everything was too quiet and too calm and he couldn’t focus for long enough on the puzzle, so he forced himself to keep picking up pieces and sliding them into the model, aware that it was probably futile but determined to keep doing something, because anything was better than nothing.

The quiet closed in deeper around him, and it seemed like everything around him increased(or maybe he got smaller) because suddenly he felt like he was back on Starkiller and he might as well have been in the void even though he was surrounded by thousands of Stormtroopers, and he stopped breathing. The mini bb-8 clattered to the ground, a piece falling on the dirt, and Finn instinctively leaned back before falling over and following the puzzle to the ground so the back of his head was on the grass and he was looking up at the stars, but the stars were so large and far away that they just made everything worse and Finn froze as memories exploded inside his skull.

_ He was sitting in the cafeteria with FN-3186 and they were talking about the drill(FN-3186 hadn’t gotten in line fast enough and had been beaten), when a fight broke out. They were both subdued and carried out of the cafeteria. FN-2187 looked at the blood on the windows, slowly hardening from bright red to dark black, the same color as the space beyond it. _

_ He was in the village and looked out as they marched in and realized he couldn’t see the stars on Jakku and thought space looked much bigger without the stars to break the void in between. _

_ He was in the fighter and he didn’t know what to do so he just stared at space and the starship in it that could shoot him in a moment if it tried. _

_ He was crawling out of the wreckage of the X-wing, and stared, because the sky was so big and blue and he’d never seen anything above him but the stars and the black and it was too large and colorful so he squinted and realized Poe Dameron was gone. _

_ He was on the Millennium Falcon and he looked out at Starkiller and realized that he was either going to do this or die and what that meant. _

The puzzle was pressing into his side, and eventually he started breathing again, but he still couldn’t look away from the stars, and tried to remember if Poe had said anything about this.

_ Most of us get them eventually, _ Poe had said(he still remembered it, even as his breath came in gasps and he had to make his thoughts into screams for them to be heard over the memories that were still repeating, over and over, blood and an endless void and guns pointing at him and a bright blue sky, too bright, too bright) and he wondered if Poe had meant these(Had Jess ever looked at her fighter and frozen, collapsing onto the ground? Had Poe ever looked at a photo and stopped breathing?) and why he hadn’t said anything about when you couldn’t reach for anything just yet because you couldn’t move.

_ Useless, _ a voice mumbled.

When Finn could move again, he fumbled around in the grass until he found the puzzle. It was even darker now(the last pilots had gone) and Finn picked up the puzzle, staring at the vague outline. He stood up, swaying slightly, and walked inside, feeling the air change, and walked through the halls, looking at the lights under doors and the dim ones in the halls signalling that other people were awake.

He thought about going to Poe’s room, but when he saw a closet, he went there instead, and sat up against the wall(he flinched, remembering it had been cold but not  _ this _ cold, Poe’s room was warmer and the walls felt softer but this was cold hard metal and it cut through the haze like a rock in gel, almost and noticeably but not all the way through), and waited.

Once he stopped, it was easy to keep stopping. He started going to Poe’s room less, and thinking  _ I should go to Poe’s room, it helps _ , before turning and sleeping in a storage room instead. He kept the puzzle, but he was done with it now, and it was less interesting to take it apart when he knew how it worked. It felt like wandering the halls, mundane and hazy because he’d done it enough that everything blurred into one solid moment.

Poe was on a mission(a long one, months), and so Finn slipped back into the haze and  sometimes the only thing he could hear was the click as mini bb-8’s pieces slid back into the shape that he knew too well by now(he wondered if it was the real bb-8’s shape once. Did this mean he could fix bb-8?).

Jess found him, sleeping in a storage room. “Poe said you were sleeping with him,” she said, after he’d startled when she kicked him. “Where’d you even learn those swear words in the First Order, anyway?”

Finn stared at her after he was done yelling(he was tired and scared, but he’d thought she was a Stormtrooper for a second and she’d jumped three feet back when he started rattling off every curse he knew(was she scared? Did she realize she’d crossed a line?)). “I. . .places,” he said. Poe, partially, but also from other things.

“Well, why are you sitting in a storage room if you’re supposed to be sleeping in Poe’s room?”

“I. . .”

Jess sighed. “Alright, are you scared of it or did you just have a panic attack and you’ve been here ever since, cold and alone and not in Poe’s room which is maybe five footsteps away?”

Finn sucked in a breath. “Yeah?”

“Do you actually want to sleep in a storage closet until Poe comes back and mothers you until you come sleep in an actual bed again, or do you want help?”

Looking up at Jess, for a second, Finn thought of Rey. He remembered how she nearly killed him, first, but then he remembered thinking  _ this is a good person, I don’t want to hurt them _ , and feeling every lie he told felt like another memory that would come back in the middle of the night later to haunt him. He remembered feeling like a weight was lifting off his chest as another one nearly crushed him when the lies came out.

Looking up at Jess, he thought,  _ this is a good person, I don’t want to hurt them _ , and decided he was going to try. If nothing else, he was going to try.

“Help,” he said. 

Jess held out her hand. “That means I’m going to help you stand up and point at the door, but you’ll have to wait until Poe comes back for the rest of the mother treatment.”

“Alright,” Finn said.

Poe’s room was warmer than the storage rooms(because it was for personal use? Because Poe had a neighbor who needed to be submerged in lava at all times to survive? After he had learned how big space really was, nothing would’ve surprised him), and Finn was more tired than he’d thought. Jess looked around and said, “So that’s that then.” She sighed. “Should I come check on you every once in a while to make sure you don’t slip back into crippling apathy?”

Finn shrugged. “Yes?”

“Ugh.”

“You don’t have to,” Finn said quickly. “It’s not your job to-”

Jess held up a hand. “I’ll do it, Poe’ll kill me otherwise and I have basic human decency.”

“You really don’t-”

“Poe said you liked milk, do you want some milk?”

Finn gave up. “Yes, why?”

“I’m getting you some milk,” Jess said.

She kept checking up on him, which was disconcerting at first. Finn would walk the hallways, but at night when he ducked into a storage closet he’d find Jess(probably slightly out of breath and swearing under her breath) standing in front of him. She’d grumble(“Poe owes me at least a tiny bb-8 for this. No, twelve tiny bb-8s!”) and help him up before showing him Poe’s room and saying “That has a bed” and waiting for him to go in. It was hard, getting used to someone caring(he kept waking up in a haze and wandering around and feeling like he was failing and falling but then there was someone there and he was pulled back) and it was a strange feeling because Jess was here more than Poe was and Finn kept getting pulled back.

“I’m going on a mission,” she said once, after pulling Finn up and towards Poe’s room. “And Poe’s not getting back for another few days and I don’t trust you to not wander off and hole up in a storage closet so Poe has to drag you back out.”

“You do that,” Finn pointed out.

“Yeah, but Poe’s going to need all his energy to mother you and the longer I take, the better you hide. If I leave you alone for a week, you’re going to disappear completely.”

“I was fine for the first few months.”

Jess crossed her arms. “I found you maybe a month after Poe left. It hits quick and fast and hard and time blurs so you don’t see it.”

Finn sighed. “So?”

“Alright first off, that sounded bad, please don’t disappear and hide in a closet where we can’t find you ever again because not only would that be bad for my conscience, Poe would, again, kill me in cold blood, and all my hard work would be lost. Second off, I’m going to stop holding the rest of the blue squadron under a silence pact, so the cleaners are going to actually stop and internalize the fact that the guy who blew up Starkiller and then was in a coma because he was injured for the cause is sitting in the storage room, sad and alone, and they’re going to be told that you’re sleeping in either Poe’s room or mine, because honestly I don’t care which as long as you don’t eat any of my food and are safe.”

Finn grimaced. “I told you, it’s really fine-”

“No it’s not,” Jess said. “Again, all my hard work is lost if you disappear. This is for me as much as you.”

“Fine,” Finn mumbled. “But if you want to stop-”

Jess held out her hand. “Want some milk? You like milk.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my characterization of each of these nerds until the official star wars canon tells me otherwise:  
> finn: angry when legitimately threatened, confused as fuck and kinda terrified when his brain isn't screaming danger, feels like he probably deserves all this(does not)  
> poe: reckless mom friend("look, I'M allowed to pull this bs, but YOU should take care of yourself, are you taking your meds???")  
> jess: what is this "emotions" nonsense i just want to fly my plane and tease people


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i can't believe i'm spending so much time in this story on a character who had one (1) line  
> (also i rewatched tfa and remembered how angry finn got sometimes; he's had a pretty Bad Time)

Being angry was hard, sometimes. Because Finn didn’t feel like anything most of the time(he felt scared, waking up from nightmares and seeing a planet blow up over and over,  _ because of him, all because of him, everyone dead for two people and it was all because of him _ , he felt happy sometimes, watching the Resistance, full of life and people and everything that came with it, but mostly he felt like nothing and that was why anything hit him so hard), but when he felt angry he felt like he had to go take Starkiller apart with his hands, had to go the the First Order and kill it himself, but he was still so small and so weak and then he felt like just another faceless soldier in a mask, only useful as part of a group, and he wondered how he’d ever been able to escape the enormous tide of the First Order.

_ There’s no fight against the First Order. Not one we can win _ , a hollow voice said in his mind.  _ We all should be running. _

And one time, he did(because Poe came back and he talked and Finn did too and he felt happy, mostly, but then he went away again and so did Jess and the rest of the pilots and they all left and they were the same size as him but they all were so much bigger, too), he walked out onto the launchpad and waved to a pilot and then he kept walking until he was running and looking down at the ground as the enormous blue sky stretched out over his head. He ran until he was exhausted and then he collapsed.

Finn looked around at the trees and the grass(so much  _ green,  _ so much still life), and then he saw that he could still see the base from here.

He had run until he was exhausted and couldn’t run anymore and the base was still there; he hadn’t gone far at all. Even on this tiny, tiny planet that the Resistance chose because nobody would ever visit it, he still could only run until he could hide for a while, and then they would find him.

They always found him. It used to be the First Order(FN-3186 pulling him out of his bed in the morning, telling him it was time to wake up and if he didn’t wake up right now it would be counted as an infraction), but now it was Poe and Jess(it was nicer, softer with Poe and Jess but it was still only a matter of time until he saw their faces over him covered by a white mask and a bloody hand reaching up to touch him) and he wondered if it would always be them, or if it would change again into someone else(Rey, maybe?), and that made him angry too, because why should the First Order get to take that away from him? He made a choice in battle, but why did he have to make that choice? He didn’t  _ choose _ to be taken away from his family. He didn’t choose any of this. He wanted to run, run away as far as someone as small as him could go, but then he found Rey and Rey couldn’t run but she had to and she hadn’t chosen this, either, and Finn didn’t want anyone else to have the First Order take away their choices.

So then he sat on a rock until it was dark and everything swirled around him(like the haze, but rougher and blurrier, like a fog had turned into a snowstorm), and then he stood up and walked inside until someone from the blue squadron(he’d said something, something about starkiller but Finn didn’t even know his name) walked by him in the halls.

“Remember not to sleep in a closet tonight,” he said.

Finn stared after him, still vaguely furious. “Okay,” he replied.

And that was that(mostly, he still felt furious sometimes and then he ran or he broke something and that helped). He still woke up sweating and feeling like his lungs were tight and couldn’t get any air in, and he still tried to find a puzzle or a picture or anything that held his attention, and soon he forgot what he’d felt like when he was furious and the memories sank into everything else, only emerging a few weeks later in the middle of the night.

When Poe came back the next time, Jess was still there, too, and they both ran into the room at the same time.

“I won!” Jess yelled, making Finn jump. “Oh, were you asleep?”

“No?” Finn said, releasing the tension in his shoulders.

Poe laughed. “Sorry, buddy. On the bright side, I won the race.”

“No, we just established that  _ I _ won,” Jess said, flopping down on the bed next to Finn. She winked at him. “Your mother isn’t as fast as he wants you to believe.”

“I don’t-”

“Right, that’s probably not a great joke to make right now,” she said quickly.

“What’ve you been doing while I was gone?” Poe asked.

Finn sat there, facing both of them at once. He wasn’t sure whether he felt comforted or anxious or somewhere in between, so he focused on answering. “Um, I, well, I went running once?” he said.

“Great!” Poe said, a little too loudly. “I mean, that’s really good! Getting out of the base for once, right?”

“You’ll be back in action in no time,” Jess said, poking Finn in the shoulder. “What’re you gonna do when it’s time for you to start working again?”

Finn blinked. “I. . .haven’t really been thinking about it,” he said. “I didn’t run very far.”

Poe shrugged. “That’s still good. You’ve gotta start off small.”

“Yeah,” Jess added. “Like, when Poe was still training, he tried to fly an X-wing directly through the hardest course, and then he simultaneously crashed, ran into a building, and had a panic attack.”

Finn cracked a smile. “He told me about that.”

“Well, they don’t call me the most daring pilot in the Resistance for nothing,” Poe said. “So, how’ve you been? Done with the puzzle yet?”

Finn held up the finished mini bb-8. 

“Did you like it?”

He paused. “Yeah, it was nice.”

Jess stood up. “Does anyone want milk? I don’t have to be here right now.”

“You can leave, Jess,” Poe said.

They sat there for a while after she left. “Is she-?”

“She has a hard time with emotions,” Poe said. “She  _ has _ them, but she doesn’t like it.”

“Oh,” Finn said. “Does she get them?”

“The panic attacks?” Poe asked. “Yeah. She used to get more. She’d get angry for weeks and jump a mile if you touched her.”

Finn nodded, crossing his legs and looking at the door. “Oh.”

“Have you been getting them as often?” Poe asked. 

Finn nodded. They hadn’t stopped, but it felt like he’d gotten used to them sometimes. He wondered if everyone did.

“That’s okay,” Poe said. “As long as you don’t crash any X-wings. General Organa almost killed me when I did that. Did running help?”

Finn knew Poe meant when he’d run near the base, but it made him think of running from the First Order instead, and he had to rip a piece out of the puzzle to bring himself back. He sat there, breathing slightly heavier than he had been.

“I guess not,” Poe said softly. 

Finn shook his head. “I ran because I was scared. And angry.”

“Like you were overcome with emotion and had to get it out by trying to run yourself to death?” Poe asked. “Or was it righteous fury because you realized you hadn’t seen the rest of the planet?”

“Run myself to death.”

Poe paused. “Well,” he said. “I’m glad you didn’t.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ok i didn't really MEAN for jessika pava to be a reoccurring character but she's here now. maybe rey will come in at some point, idk. also jessika pava having her lovely one line means i can characterize her HOWEVER I WANT, and how i want to characterize her is me with better hair, so that's what i'm going with


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I feel the strange, overwhelming urge to both champion this chapter because it got done!!!! it has some plot in it and is decently written and most importantly, IT IS DONE! and also the urge to apologize because finn becomes slightly less of a depressed mess in this chapter and it means his voice is changing a bit, which was actually jarring for me to write and which has gotta be weird to read, but, ya know, the perils of putting in month-long time skips every single chapter

Finn had never had a birthday. Well, of course he had a birthday, he was created on  _ some _ day, but he didn’t remember it clearly and he’d certainly never cared too much about it, and so when Poe asked him about it one day while Finn was sitting in Poe’s room(Poe had given up on trying to make him think of it as theirs, because it wasn’t, not really), and Finn felt like he sometimes did when talking to any of them, where they said something and he understood all the words individually but they meant nothing in the sentences they were said in.

“You’ve never had a  _ birthday?” _ Poe said, momentarily shocked. “Okay, no, that makes perfect sense, but really? Never? Not one? That seems sketchy, you must’ve had a rebellious birthday celebration like the weird romances say. Not even a present or anything?”

“Why would I?” Finn asked. 

Poe leaned back against the wall. “Wow, that’s a whole new level of dictatorship.”

“I’m sorry?” Finn tried. “What are you talking about?” He looked over at Poe, who looked back at him.

“Nah, this is my fault,” Poe eventually said. “I guess I didn’t really realize how deep it went.”

Finn knew(although his mind always seemed to change that to “hoped” and occasionally to “guessed”) that Poe was exaggerating(but it still made him feel like he’d done something horribly wrong, and he didn’t want to bother Poe by telling him, even if every time it happened Finn tensed up and waited for a strike from a trainer’s hand that never came and shouts that he never heard outside of his memories, and Poe had never done this before, it was always Jess, and she mostly realized it, but why was  _ Poe _ doing it?). “Yeah. Right.”

“I mean, do you even know what a birthday party is?” Poe leaned forward. “Birthday presents?”

Finn shook his head. Poe grimaced. “You know how old you are, right?”

He was about to answer, when he realized he didn’t(not for sure, anyway. He knew it’d been over three years, and was starting to be near to a fourth, since he’d come to the base, but he’d never needed to know his birthdate in the First Order, only his physical health and skill levels). Poe realized what the silence meant and looked, for a moment, completely shell-shocked. “I am going to personally burn the First Order to the ground,” he said slowly. “What in the Force’s name-”

“Why does it  _ matter?” _ Finn said suddenly(normally he wouldn’t do this, would never interrupt Poe except when he was in the heat of the moment, but Poe wasn’t playing by the rules and so now Finn wasn’t either, and it was too late to take it back). “My age, and whatever the rest of that is.”

And then Poe seemed to realize what he was doing. “Oh,  _ no. _ ” Then he paused. “Look, buddy, I’m really sorry about that. All of it. I didn’t have the right to get all in your face like that, but it’s just. Weird. Almost everyone has something they celebrate, but the First Order doesn’t, and that’s kinda jarring, you know? But it’s not your fault and I shouldn’t act like it,” and then he just waved his hands around a bit.

Finn wasn’t sure what to say(thank you? I’m sorry? Is there something I should be doing right now?), so he just nodded.

Poe leaned back again, before looking sideways at Finn. “I’m sorry. You deserve better.”

A few days later, Jess tracked Finn down to where he was reading about the history of the Force, and waited until Finn looked up at her.

“I have been sent by Dameron to make sure you haven’t disappeared into the deep pits of the storage rooms,” she said, holding her hands up. “You’re clearly fine, so that’s good.”

“It’s only been three days,” Finn pointed out. 

“You’ve accomplished worse in less.”

He was tired(he’d been tired for almost four years, but now he was really tired). “I’m  _ fine _ ,” he said. “I’ve just been having kind of a messed up week.”

“Kind of a messed up  _ life,” _ she corrected. “And you wouldn’t be doing this if you were fine.”

“I’m reading.”

Jess sighed. “Point taken. But you’re still acting not okay. I think the most normal thing you’ve done in four years is that one time you said you went for a run, and that other time when you had a conversation. I mean, I can get Poe off your back. I’ve been his teammate and friend. I can guilt him. But I’m not sure that’s what you need.”

Finn stared at her. Then he put his head in his hands. Everyone was acting so  _ weird _ lately. When he looked up again, Jess was leaning awkwardly against a chair. “Done yet?” she asked.

Finn shrugged. “Close enough,” Jess said. “I’m gonna leave you alone right now. Don’t disappear, because if you did that  _ the minute I decided to have emotions in front of you _ , that would be awkward.” It stung a little, but not enough that he didn’t wave when she stood up and walked out.

He felt odd, when he thought about it, in a way he knew he’d felt before but couldn’t quite place(which wasn’t entirely surprising- he couldn’t quite place a lot of things). Finn felt. . .real, he called it eventually. Sometimes, he didn’t feel real, just a patch of nothing floating on the edge of everyone’s lives, not contributing anything, just taking space away from the rest of the universe. It’d been like that, on and off, for years. But now, he felt real, and it wasn’t for the fleeting days when Poe was back or the one, sharp emotion when Jess or someone else dragged him back to living, it had been that way for a while. It wasn’t all the way better, because he’d almost snapped when Poe had that conversation about birthdays, and Jess was acting weird too, but that almost made it better at the same time, because then  _ they _ felt real too, like actual people instead of Poe being the human personification of a soft blanket and Jess being a strangely nice presence in the corner of his vision. It was odd, but it was all right. He could get used to it.

Jess had also reminded him that he wanted to find out what a birthday present was, which was helpful.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> facts about this chapter:  
> 1\. I took the time to go back and tally up all the time I'd absent-mindedly made a huge time skip and added it all up before going "IT'S LIKE FOUR YEARS LATER WHOOPS" and trying to work that into the story.  
> 2\. The first scene of this chapter was possibly going to lead into a much longer scene, but then I decided to keep up the Age Old Dameron Tradition Of Starting Off Suave And Quickly Just Kinda Dissolving Into Awkwardness  
> 3\. Sometime around the plotting of this chapter, I looked up and said "You know what? Screw it. I'll write one of Finn's actual good days, because I've alluded to those existing and I should probably confirm those rumours. No, not good enough- he gets a good WEEK. It's been four years. Let him Rest".


End file.
